1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to cloud computing and, in particular, to methods and systems based on cloud aspects to facilitate migration of workloads to cloud computing environments.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many enterprises are considering the migration of existing workloads to a cloud or considering whether a new workload would be more effectively deployed on a cloud than on a conventional system. Factors that face such enterprises include whether to run one specific workload on one specific cloud; cost comparisons of running the workload on several potential clouds, such as two available public clouds or a to-be-built private cloud of the customer; comparing the costs with the current cost of running the workload; and an overall strategy for placing a large set of workloads on one or more clouds, including the planning of the most suitable design for a private cloud.
Existing migration analysis tools are based primarily on application-to-operating-system compatibility. This is not sufficient for a cloud analysis, because with clouds there are many other factors to consider. Clouds mostly gain their efficiency by economies of scale, and so each cloud fixes the features it offers and can accommodate. There are many more possible cloud configurations than operating system (OS) and hardware platforms, especially if one is designing a private cloud.